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More "Disbelief" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... except—and the exception is worth noting—that the former's moral sense, whatever he originally had of it, has been blunted or discouraged, and he has conceived a settled animosity against human authority, and disbelief in the justice and sincerity of its administrators. He has been the subject, during his incarceration, of such numberless acts of gratuitous tyranny, outrage and cruelty, and has seen so much of "the way things go," in general, that though he may concede that honesty ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... nothing to forgive except your old disbelief in Gretchen, and deceiving me about sending the carriage the night Jerrie came; but if there is anything else, no matter what it is, I do ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... be suspected of any desire to prophesy too smooth things. It is no object of ours to bridge over the gulf between belief in the vulgar theology and disbelief. Nor for a single moment do we pretend that, when all the points of contact between virtuous belief and virtuous disbelief are made the most of that good faith will allow, there will not still and after all remain a terrible controversy between those who cling passionately to all the consolations, ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... at her niece, and both of them knew that, if the lawyer had traced Courthorne's past correctly, this could not be true. Still, there was no disbelief in the elder lady's eyes, and the girl's faith ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... very rarely attended the parish church with his wife, affecting to despise such humdrum and conventional worship. He had just that thin smattering of modern science which enables shallow youth to make a merit of disbelief in all things beyond the limit of mathematical demonstration. He had skimmed Darwin, and spoke lightly of mankind as the latest development of time and matter, and no higher a being, from a spiritual point of view, than the first worm that wriggled in its primeval slime. He had dipped into ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... and Miss Pink devised an arrangement which paid due respect to Isabel's scruples, and at the same time met Lady Lydiard's insulting assertion of disbelief in Hardyman's honor, by a formal and public announcement of ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... without any third confederate. Triumviri might be very well; Archie also had heard of triumviri; but two were company, and three were none. Thus he consoled himself when his pigheaded brother expressed his disbelief in the ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... "this apparition," and that, too, an intelligent spirit—that is, to be spoken to! Then comes the confirmation of Horatio's disbelief;— ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... little pale, round-shouldered dealer stood almost on tip-toe, looking over the top of his gold spectacles, and nodding his head with every mark of disbelief. Markheim returned his gaze with one of infinite pity, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Miss Aubrey," said Alice, rising with an air of cold dignity, which plainly indicated her entire disbelief of the statement she had just heard—"Say no more: you have mistaken your position, when you seek to prejudice me against a gentleman whom I am so soon to call my husband. Nay, not a word more—I will not listen to you. The Chevalier Duvall ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... neighbors, is deemed so entirely incredible, most persons would probably be unable to give a very definite answer to the question. It is not because we have examined the evidence and found it insufficient, for the disbelief always precedes, when it does not prevent, examination. It is rather because the idea of absurdity is so strongly attached to such narratives, that it is difficult even to consider them with gravity. ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... benefit of the doubt. Only a small band of martyrs elected to bleed at the shrine of principle; they declined to stultify their stomachs with "horse soup." This was a reckless assumption, indicative of a shocking disbelief in human nature; an inexpedient conclusion. They were all honourable men on the Kitchen Committee. What! all? the reader may exclaim. Well, all but one, perhaps—who told an interviewer in London that "horseflesh made excellent soup!" But that was ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... with the sharp tones of alarm and incredulity. "I don't know you:" trying, by futile words of disbelief, to do away with ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... sweetness of her, the humble submissiveness of her appeal, could not but win their way. Michael's lingering disbelief wavered and broke. She had been foolish, spoilt and thoughtless, but she had never done any real harm. Men had loved her—but how could it be otherwise? And perhaps, after all, they were none the ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... conversations there; that "it might appear to have been before God" is enough to convince me. There was a man once*—I forget his name, but we may call him Cho Kung for our purposes; he was of affable demeanor, and an excellent flautist; and had an enormous disbelief in ghosts, bogies, goblins, and 'supernatural' beings of every kind. It seized him with the force of a narrow creed; and he went forth to missionarize, seeking disputants. He found one in the chief Librarian of some provincial library; who confessed to a credulousness along that ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... the muddy carpet had been gone into thoroughly by father and mother. Jane's candid explanation that the mud had come from the bottom of a foreign tower where there was buried treasure was received with such chilling disbelief that the others limited their defence to an expression of sorrow, and of a determination 'not to do it again'. But father said (and mother agreed with him, because mothers have to agree with fathers, and not because it was her own idea) that ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... with an intensity of horror, of loathing, which at first deprived him almost of every other feeling; but when he could withdraw himself from the horrible idea, a species of disbelief took possession of him. It was impossible such utter depravity, such fearful insensibility to the claims of nature could exist in the breast of any man; it was a tale forged to inflict fresh agony on the mother's ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... wide, filled with incredulous wonder, stunned disbelief, Norhala for an instant faltered. Then out of her white throat, through her red lips pelted ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... makes virtue a mere matter of prudence, although not so obviously unsatisfactory, leads to consequences which sufficiently invalidate every argument in its favour. Among others it leads us to conclude, 1. That the disbelief of a future state absolves from all moral obligation, excepting in so far as we find virtue to be conducive to our present interest: 2. That a being independently and completely happy cannot have any moral ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... pronounce the escape of these two white men incredible, we hasten to explain that which, if left unexplained, would warrant such disbelief on the ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... basket of fruit, or a few grains of salt, offered at stated seasons, with becoming decorum; and then when alone together, they smiled that such concessions were necessary to satisfy the superstitions of the vulgar. But disbelief in divine beings, and the eternal nature of truth, cannot long be concealed by pouring the usual libations, or maintaining a cautious reserve. The whispered opinions of false philosophers will soon be loudly echoed by the ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... by an ugly name!" Then it occurred to her that the world tells lies every day,—telling on the whole much more lies than truth,—but that the world has wisely agreed that the world shall not be accused of lying. One doesn't venture to express open disbelief even of one's wife; and with the world at large a word spoken, whether lie or not, is presumed to be true of course,—because spoken. Jones has said it, and therefore Smith,—who has known the lie to be a lie,—has asserted ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... whether a Prelatic, Presbyterian, or any other), at least, when you have set up such a Church, let there be a perfect toleration for all subjects of the realm round about that Church, no compulsion on any of them to belong to that Church, no pains and penalties for any profession of belief or disbelief, or any form of worship or no-worship, out of that Church." These are not Williams's own words, but they exactly express his meaning; and, in fact, he intended his Bloody Tenent to be a plea for toleration in this practical sense, if it should fail in winning people to his higher ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... with a curt laugh, which might have been intended to deprecate the possession of any opinion on a vintage, or to express his disbelief that Dormer Colville desired to ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... a strong mind against the extreme spiritualism and polytheism of the day. For, in those days, the deep spirituality of the Brahman had overflowed its banks and had created a multitudinous pantheon which repelled this man of stern mind. It was to him only a short step from a disbelief in the many gods to a doubt as to the existence of any god. And in this agnosticism he was doubtless aided by his fondness for the Sankya school of thought, which is Indian Agnosticism. In any case, his deliverances and his established religion, if such it really can be called, ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... century. By opposing it, even Voltaire incurred the reputation of bigotry, and Hume probably had to listen to a good deal of it on that memorable occasion when, dining with Baron D'Holbach, and intimating to his host his disbelief in the existence of atheists, he was informed by way of reply that he was actually at table with seventeen members of the sect.[36] That in England, too, it was a good deal talked at about the same and a somewhat later period, may be inferred from ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... Cross, the evidence and symbol of God's love; and there stands the risen Christ, offering Himself to men. There is nothing which more certainly proves the innate evil of the human heart than its refusal of that mystery of grace. Disbelief is the creature, not of the intellect, but of the will. It is not the result of inability to understand, but of stubborn obstinacy and stiffneckedness. Here is the supreme manifestation of moral beauty, but man has no eyes for it. Here ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... such things, being unbelievers and in league with the Father of Evil, who leads them unharmed through the invisible dangers of this world. To the warnings of the righteous they oppose an offensive pretence of disbelief. What ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... hardly think it still exists—a class of persons who prided themselves on their disbelief in the reality of any such distinct disease as hydrophobia. I never thought it worth while to argue with them, for I have noticed that this disbelief is only a special manifestation of a particular habit of mind. ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... belief or disbelief. That's the law, and you take it or refuse it as you please. I try to obey, but I can't, and then my work turns bad on my hands. Under any circumstances, remember, four-fifths of everybody's work must be bad. But the remnant is worth the trouble ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Andy advised, still wholly unconscious of their disbelief. "Yuh was all kinda skeptical when I told yuh he had a guilty conscience, but I was right about it, and come mighty near laying out on the range to-night with my toes pointing straight up, just because ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... ATHEISM, disbelief in the existence of God, which may be either theoretical, in the intellect, or practical, in the life, the latter the more common and the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... witchcraft, and he is chiefly remembered not as an admirer of Descartes and Bacon, and a champion of the Royal Society, but as the author of Saducismus Triumphatus, a monument of superstition, which probably contributed to check the gradual growth of disbelief ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... where she had found her mother seated on that evening which it seemed to the girl had begun all her misery; but till now through all there had been hope—the hope given by disbelief in Leon's engagement to Elise Lesage. Now there was the sad, terrible certainty that Leon believed her false. Marie knew that though she had never pledged faith, still her eyes had shown Leon feelings which no other man had seen in them. For a moment she felt nerved to a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... aboriginal black, with dull faces, short and thick forms, and an air of animal contentment or at least indifference. They talked little, but giggled a great deal, snatching the canvas bags from each other, and otherwise showing their disbelief in the doctrine of all work and no play. When the barrows were sufficiently filled to suit their weak ideal of a load, a procession of them set off along a plank causeway leading into the fort, observing a droll semblance of military precision and pomp, and forcing a passage through ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... grow. She gazed and stared, injury, disbelief, pain, in her mobile expression. "Why, Frances, I didn't have a thing to do with it, not a thing! Mother and I protested against this military invasion of our house, but protests were useless. The country is under ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... it," murmured Roger with a note of disbelief in his voice. "We made it!" And then, with the realization that he was still a Space Cadet for at least another term, he turned and began pounding Astro on the back. "You big Venusian ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell
... mean a disbelief of a Supreme Being, and consequently of a future state, under whatsoever title it shelters itself, may likewise very reasonably deprive a man of this cheerfulness of temper. There is something so particularly gloomy and offensive to human nature in ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... John gave vent to an exclamation of disbelief. "Why, Ruth was only telling me half an hour ago how good and generous you were, and Louie caught me in the Lodge and went into regular spasms over you. You're the patientest, the generousest—everythingelse-est ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... disbelief. He was precisely that sort of child from whom it is next to impossible to disguise facts; quick, thoughtful, observant, and advanced beyond his years. Had no words been dropped in his hearing, he would have suspected the evil, by the care evinced ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... he convicted of disbelief in the most holy Catholic faith," said the grand inquisitor. "But I find, by a memorial which was addressed to me many mouths ago—indeed, very shortly after the arrest of this miserable unbeliever—and ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... completely full. He was known to be an ardent spiritualist—it was even said that he had challenged Huxley to a public discussion on materialism, and he came to the biological lectures and worked intermittently, in order, he explained, to fight disbelief with its own weapons. He rose greedily ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... said nothing, the expression on his face was one of such utter disbelief that even Tom noticed it and ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... rumors of Coalitions, or attempted Coalitions, we have already expressed our disbelief in that reported to have taken place between the Grenville-Windhamites and Mr. Fox. At least, if it was ever in negotiation, we have reason to think it received an early check, arising from a strong party of the Old Opposition protesting against it. The account ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... in Christ—to my book. And their attitude could not have been different. They are bound to take up this attitude by the contradictory position in which they find themselves between belief in the divinity of their Master and disbelief in his clearest utterances, and they want to escape from this contradiction. So that one cannot expect from them free discussion of the very essence of the question—that is, of the change in men's life which must result from applying Christ's teaching ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... it necessary to reply. I think his intention was to crake disbelief of his rival's sincerity, to throw cold water on his burning professions, perhaps even to question the excellence of his intentions. But his nerve was obviously shaken by his competitor's undoubtedly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... his wife and family, had come to reside for the season in the suburban house of a friend and neighbour of Professor Barrett's. He was an Irish country gentleman who had an utter disbelief in spiritualism. Professor Barrett was therefore not a little amused on making Mr. C.'s acquaintance, to find that he had in his own family what appeared to be spiritualistic phenomena then and there going ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... of those to whom knowledge comes as a bitter aftermath. When his regiment had received orders to move from the Rock, and he had informed Inez of his departure, she had turned aside, just as Zahara had done; scornfully and in silence. Because of his disbelief in her he had guarded his heart against this beautiful Spanish girl who (as he realized too late) had brought him the only real happiness he had ever known. Often she had told him of her brother, Miguel, who would ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... not because they were paying homage to a tyrannical or an unworthy landlord, though Mr. Davitt was so transported beyond his ordinary and cooler self with rage at their action that he actually stooped to something like an insinuation of disbelief in the excellence of Lord Fitzwilliam's character. The true and avowed burden of his diatribe was that no landlord could possibly deserve well of his tenants. The better he is as a man, the more they ought to hate ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... of the last four months came pelting. Anthony fairly opened his heart. At first, listening to the bare truth told with the confident naivete of disbelief, Valerie felt as though she were cheating the blind. After a little, this sense of shabbiness was suddenly supplanted by a perfect torment of apprehension lest Anthony should detect her hypocrisy. Presently, before her breathless interest in the narrative, the girl's uneasiness slipped unremarked ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention to the lethargy ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... simply matter of fact. My belief in Christianity does not add one jot to these facts. My disbelief does not take one tittle from them. So far as they are concerned, every man is a believer in Christianity. He believes it exists. He believes it has existed, has had such and such a history, has produced such and such results. 'Christian' and 'infidel' alike, to be reasonable, to have any ground ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... for there was a sneering grin of disbelief on Garcia's countenance, which made me want to dash my fist in his face, as ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... interest. Thus the news that the new schoolmaster had opened a night school, and that some sixteen or eighteen of the lads belonging to the Vaughan had joined it, created quite an excitement. At first the statement was received with positive disbelief. There was no precedent for such a thing, and in its ways at least Stokebridge was ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... so the speculative impulse waned. Not long before his death he told Trelawny that he was not inquisitive about the system of the universe, that his mind was tranquil on these high questions. He seems, for instance, to have oscillated vaguely between belief and disbelief in personal life after death, and on the whole to have concluded that there was no ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... in a tone of forced condescension. The writer is evidently compelled, as representative of British literary interests, to bear witness to the Shandy craze, but the attitude of the review is plainly indicative of its author's disbelief in any occasion for especial concern about Yorick in Germany. Sterne himself is mentioned as a fitful whim of British taste, and a German devotion to him is beyond the ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... Marjory shot him a little glance of disbelief. " Of course you would say that," she repeated with ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... 2. His disbelief that Lord Aberdeen would be able to join in any Government abandoning Sir R. Peel's principles, as he had been consulted before and after Sir James's late speech in which he ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... in my secret soul for a want of ardency and attachment, she had been giving me the highest proof that she possessed the warmest. These revelations, however, were to reach me slowly; and then, like those of Cassandra, they were destined to encounter disbelief. ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... unanimous opposition. It was evident that no plan which entailed parting from their new acquisition would for a moment be entertained. "Besides," said Tom Ryder, "them fellows at Red Dog would swap it, and ring in somebody else on us." A disbelief in the honesty of other camps prevailed at Roaring ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... mother was an Englishwoman and an ardent Catholic. She and my father were devoted to each other in spite of the difference in their views. Perhaps the chief effect my father's lack of belief had upon my mother was to make her own belief more steadfast, more ardent. I think disbelief acts often as a fan to the faith of women, makes the flame burn more brightly than it did before. My mother tried to believe for herself and for my father too, and I could almost think that she succeeded. He died long before she did, and he died without changing ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... they were in the habit of killing reputations to give themselves bonnes fortunes, as Frenchmen might have done under similar circumstances; their defamatory gossip was more about men than about women, and seemed to arise partly from a general disbelief in virtue, and partly from inability to maintain an interesting conversation on other than personal topics. And though much of this evil speaking was evidently prompted by personal enmities, much also of it seemed to originate in no hostile ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... It narrowed its sphere, and attached itself to man. But from all that is deepest and noblest in man it was shut off by the reaction from Puritanism, by the weariness of religious strife, by the disbelief that had sprung from religious controversy; and it limited itself rigidly to man's outer life, to his sensuous enjoyment, his toil and labour, his politics, his society. The limitation, no doubt, had its good sides; with it, if not of it, came a greater correctness and precision in the ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... with a Malthusian relentlessness. We of to-day have the ghosts that haunted our ancestors, as well as our own modern revenants, and there's no earthly use trying to banish or exorcise them by such a simple thing as disbelief in them. Schopenhauer asserts that a belief in ghosts is born with man, that it is found in all ages and in all lands, and that no one is free from it. Since accounts vary, and our earliest antecedents were poor diarists, it is difficult to establish ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... the complete change of front which was the logical result of the revolution for which they had been working. But beside that there is a much more interesting opposition based on political considerations. The Menshevik standpoint is one of disbelief in the permanence of the revolution, or rather in the permanence of the victory of the town workers. They point to the divergence in interests between the town and country populations, and are convinced that sooner ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... little matters discussed, men's tongues began to run less glibly. Of course it was impossible that it could be true; and yet the evidence was certainly strong. In the country generally the first impulse of generous disbelief was followed by a period of pained and reserved expectancy. In clubdom, where neither fear of the devil nor love of God had yet been able to keep the modern man of the world from discussing freely any subject interesting to him, a gradual ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... literally petrified. The English breathed fire and flame. The sudden outburst of a volcano would not have been more startling than this piece of news which came from a clear sky. The impression made upon the populace was one of surprise which amounted to disbelief. People stopped in the streets to ask one another if ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... indeed, and many others of his tribe, possess a laudable curiosity, which might easily be directed to the most important ends; and I believe, that a well-conducted Christian mission to this quarter would not fail of producing the happiest effect. Old Keskarrah alone used boldly to express his disbelief of a Supreme Deity, and state that he could not credit the existence of a Being, whose power was said to extend every where, but whom he had not yet seen, although he was now an old man. The aged sceptic is not a little ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... in disbelief. "It can't be that he sits up to read," she resumed. "Nobody in their senses would do that. Reading may be pleasant to some folks, especially them story-books; but sleep is pleasanter. This last two or three blessed nights, since that ill news come to make us miserable, I question ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... any existent philosophy. However this be, it would certainly seem, that, in this majestic picture of the dauntless enemy of Jupiter, punished only for his benefits to man, and attracting all our sympathies by his courage and his benevolence, is conveyed something of disbelief or defiance of the creed of the populace—a suspicion from which Aeschylus was not free in the judgment of his contemporaries, and which is by no means inconsonant ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... earnestly that he was in the reverse position, and that Nunaga was no more to him than the snout of a seal; but he protested in vain, for his pleasant little mother believed that she understood the language of symptoms, and nodded her disbelief smilingly. ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... satisfied; but it seems she either knows or suspects something, and we must be more than ever on our guard. What I wish to say to you now, is, that this lady, either for willfulness or out of disbelief, affects to discredit my statement concerning Hadley's death, and I wish you to accompany me to the cave to-morrow, and confirm my statements. You need not implicate yourselves, but give the facts ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... travelers would protect Larry Kildene, because he knew so well how many dangers there were, and that he, who had carried the Christ with all his burden of sorrows could surely keep "Sir Kildene" even through the snows of winter. In spite of an inherent and trained disbelief in all supposed legends, especially as tenets of faith, Harry felt himself comforted by her talk, yet he could not forbear questioning her as to ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... manifest his will through him to whom the keeping of the instrument is entrusted. These juggleries being very ancient (from the fathers of our fathers, say the Indians), we must not be surprised that some unbelievers are already to be found; but they express their disbelief of the mysteries of the botuto only in whispers. Women are not permitted to see this marvellous instrument; and are excluded from all the ceremonies of this worship. If a woman have the misfortune to see the trumpet, she is put to death without mercy. The missionary related ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... his dark, watchful, composed face uplifted above a line of bayonets, never failed in their magic. Like all born leaders, he seemed in these emergencies to hold a charmed life—infecting his followers with a like disbelief in death; men dropped to right and left of him with serene assurance in their ghastly faces or a cry of life and confidence in their last gasp. Stragglers fell in and closed up under his passing glance; a hopeless, inextricable wrangle around an overturned ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... Nikolayevitch's disbelief in the religion of the church, no one dared to mention the subject to him, and the unhappy Maria Mikhailovna hovered round his room, wringing her hands ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... new heaven and earth which our Lord made, when Saint John was writing the Apocalypse,[371-2] after what was spoken by the mouth of Isaiah,[371-3] he made me the messenger, and showed me where it lay. In all men there was disbelief, but to the Queen my Lady He gave the spirit of understanding, and great courage, and made her heiress of all, as a dear and much loved daughter. I went to take possession of all this in her royal name. They sought to make amends to her for the ignorance they had ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... my mind, for or against the probability of a state of future existence. They appeared to me to be tolerably evenly balanced. I then thought that it was at all events taking the safest part to conclude that there was a soul. It would be a terrible thing, after having passed one's life in the disbelief of the existence of a soul, to wake up after death a soul, and to find one's self a lost soul. Yes, methought I would come to the conclusion that one has a soul. Choosing the safe side, however, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... densest, yellowest London particular that had been experienced for years. It was the sort of day when the City clerk has the exhilarating certainty that at last he has an excuse for lateness which cannot possibly be received with harsh disbelief. People spent the day indoors and hoped it would clear ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... much violence, as I afterwards learned, the master of the house informed him that he knew something of the nun, and mentioned that she charged the priests of the Seminary with crimes of an awful character; in reply to which the carpenter expressed the greatest disbelief. ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... 390 millions of millions of millions of tons), with a velocity of some 300 miles per second, would warm our sun considerably. But there is no risk of this happening in Mercury's case—though the unseen and much more shifty Vulcan (in which planet I beg to express here my utter disbelief) might, perchance, work ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... blind man might believe that light is sweet, or one who had never experienced pain might believe it was something from which the senses shrink. Every day that I have recited the creed, and declared my belief in the Life Everlasting, I have by implication confessed my entire disbelief in any other. I knew that what seemed so solid is not solid, so real is not real; that the life of the flesh, of the senses, of things seen, is but the "stuff that dreams are made of"—"a dream within a dream," as one modern writer has called it; "the shadow of a dream," ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... physical forces, or our disbelief in their ability to give rise to life, is like a survival in us of the Calvinistic creed of our fathers. The world of inert matter is dead in trespasses and sin and must be born again before it can enter the kingdom of the organic. We must supplement the natural forces ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... at Providence would have been like manna in the wilderness. I came into the very midst of the fuss,[C] and, tedious as it was at the time, I am glad to have seen it. I shall in future be able to believe real, what I have read with a dim disbelief of such times and tendencies. There is, indeed, little good, little cheer, in what I have seen: a city full of grown-up people as wild, as mischief-seeking, as full of prejudice, careless slander, and exaggeration, as a herd of ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... to be exaggerations and perversions of the truth, if not entirely false—things derogatory to him, and flattering to them—especially to Miss Murray—which I burned to contradict, or, at least, to show my doubts about, but dared not; lest, in expressing my disbelief, I should display my interest too. Other things I heard, which I felt or feared were indeed too true: but I must still conceal my anxiety respecting him, my indignation against them, beneath a careless aspect; others, again, ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... the real difficulties which beset this question, and for the peculiar feelings, partly allowable, and largely the reverse, with which it is entertained, we have no doubt that many have been driven to the extreme of utter disbelief in the existence of any punishment by the bold and presumptuous manner in which they may have heard men consign all the heathen, and all Christendom, with the exception of a very few, to this awful doom. Infants even have not escaped the condemnation of some who, professing ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... I stepped into the one where we had been keeping our prisoner. Mott lay on the floor, his body still warm, quite dead. I judged that he had expired within the past few minutes. He had been struck with some blunt instrument and then knifed. The man had paid for his obstinate disbelief ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... member of the Dutch Reformed Church, and yet he lived out his days with a beautiful and perfect disbelief in revealed religion. He knew enough of biology to know that religions are not "revealed"—they are evolved. Yet he recognized the value of the Church as a social factor. To him it was a good police system, and so when rightly ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... have so much felt the mere physical want. With less reason has it been urged by other critics, that the sudden relenting of the tyrant is contrary to his character. The tyrant here has no individual character at all. He is the mere personation of disbelief in truth and love—which the spectacle of sublime self-abnegation at once converts. In this idea lies the deep philosophical truth, which redeems all the defects of the piece—for poetry, in its highest form, is merely this—"Truth ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... different learned societies, and was enrolled a member of the Lyncaean Academy. In two years after his visit to the capital he published a work in which he declared his adhesion to the Copernican theory, and openly avowed his disbelief in the astronomical facts recorded in the Scriptures. Galileo maintained that the sacred writings were not intended for the purpose of imparting scientific information, and that it was impossible for men to ignore phenomena witnessed with their eyes, or disregard conclusions arrived ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... can profess to believe that there will be no calamities in the future to reduce the population of the earth. And apart from cataclysms of disease or of war, empires have perished by moral catastrophe. A disbelief in God results in selfishness, and in various moral catastrophes. In the terse phrase of Mr. Bernard Shaw, "Voluptuaries prosper and perish." [12] For example, during the second century B.C. the disease of rationalism, ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... of a conversation we held in bed one night. Some particularly pious phrase of my elder cousin's irritated me extremely, and I avowed outright my entire disbelief in the whole scheme of revealed religion. I had never said a word about my doubts to any one before, except to Ewart who had first evolved them. I had never settled my doubts until at this moment when I spoke. But it came to me then that the whole scheme of salvation of ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... transparent domes of their space helmets, Joe could see a look of horror and disbelief pass across Haney's face. But it was true! Joe and his crew were locked out of the ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... charter from Charles II. The judgment in the Court of Chancery was given in favour of the Society, and Boyle himself likewise endowed it with a third part of a grant of the forfeited impropriations in Ireland which he had received from the king. But all the time there was a great disbelief in the efficacy of the work among the Indians both at home and in New England. It was the fashion to call all the stories of Indian conversions mere devices for getting money, and the unhappy, proud hostility that almost always actuated the ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... races. The party lasted more than a week; there was a great number of people, and it was very agreeable. Erskine was extremely mad; he read me some of his verses, and we had a dispute upon religious subjects one morning, which he finished by declaring his entire disbelief in the Mosaic history. We played at whist every night that the Duke was there, and I always won. The Duchess was unwell most of the time. We showed her a galanterie which pleased her very much. She produced a picture of herself one evening, which she said she was going to send ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... realized—things formerly considered mere fairy-tales have become facts—yet, in spite of the marvels of learning and science that are hourly accomplished among us, the attitude of mankind is one of disbelief. "There is no God!" cries one theorist; "or if there be one, I can obtain no proof of His existence!" "There is no Creator!" exclaims another. "The Universe is simply a rushing together of atoms." "There can be no immortality," asserts a third. "We are but dust, and to dust ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... by appearances." "Yes," said he, "but come away, and I will show you something more." Whereupon he transported me up to where stood the churches of the city of Perdition, for every body in it had an appearance of faith, even in the age of Disbelief. First we went to the temple of Heathenism, where I could see some adoring the form of a man, others that of the sun, others that of the moon, and an innumerable quantity of similar other gods, even down to leek and garlick, and a great goddess termed Delusion, obtaining general adoration, although ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... families, did justice to their neighbors, and sincerely tried to serve God, not only waged an unceasing war on the red and white foes of the State and of order, but carried it on with a certain ruthlessness that indicated less a disbelief in, than an utter lack of knowledge of, such a virtue as ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... El Demonio's heroic reputation had preceded him, therefore his unsmiling effort to ridicule himself struck the audience as a new and excruciatingly funny phase of his eccentricity. Encountering this blank wall of disbelief, Branch waxed more earnest, more convincing; in melancholy detail he described his arrant timidity, his cringing fear of pain, his abhorrence of blood and steel. His elongated face was genuinely solemn, his voice trembled, his brow grew damp with unpleasant, memories; he ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... a coral horn from his pocket, saying the professor might have the other bed if I would wear the coral all night. Of course I chaffed him about having the horn in his pocket after his protestations of disbelief, but it was like talking to a kitten that has been caught stealing fish and I had to take his charm and promise to conform on the ground that one cannot be ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... some order given him for the morning which had been forgotten; and on his return to the foc's'le Jem was all attention for him to proceed with his promised yarn about the real pirates of whom he had spoken, the worthy seaman continuing to express a strong disbelief ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... But hesitation, suspense, conflict between belief and disbelief—is sometimes such torture to a conscientious man, such as you are, that it's better to hang oneself at once. Knowing that you are inclined to believe in me, I administered some disbelief by telling you that anecdote. I lead you to belief ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... where there were three of them together there were two atheists, had a real significance, but not that which was intended by the sharp-tongued ecclesiastic who first uttered it. Undoubtedly there is a strong tendency in the pursuits of the medical profession to produce disbelief in that figment of tradition and diseased human imagination which has been installed in the seat of divinity by the priesthood of cruel and ignorant ages. It is impossible, or at least very difficult, for a physician who has seen the perpetual efforts of Nature—whose diary is the book he ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... person and of raiment, in marvelous fashion, so that their number increases with a Malthusian relentlessness. We of to-day have the ghosts that haunted our ancestors, as well as our own modern revenants, and there's no earthly use trying to banish or exorcise them by such a simple thing as disbelief in them. Schopenhauer asserts that a belief in ghosts is born with man, that it is found in all ages and in all lands, and that no one is free from it. Since accounts vary, and our earliest antecedents were poor diarists, it is difficult to establish the apostolic succession ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... "Historia Translationis" contained nothing more than has been laid before the reader, up to this time, disbelief in the miracles of which it gives so precise and full a record might well be regarded as hyper-scepticism. It might fairly be said, Here you have a man, whose high character, acute intelligence, and large instruction are certified by eminent contemporaries; a man who stood ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... disbelief, incredulity, perplexity, suspense, distrust, indecision, question, suspicion, hesitancy, irresolution, scruple, unbelief, hesitation, misgiving, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... phenomena in Spaceland, and the arguments for the existence of Solid things derivable from Analogy. Yet—I take shame to be forced to confess it—my brother has not yet grasped the nature of Three Dimensions, and frankly avows his disbelief in the existence ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... Immortal, came to see me once, but only to speak of the necessity for the immediate simplification of houses. It was odd to observe how, once a man became infected, his former interests and anxieties fell away from him like an old garment. In Harley Street an attitude of stubborn disbelief continued amongst those still mortal. There is something magnificent in that adamantine spirit which refuses to recognize the new, even though it moves with ever-increasing distinctness before the very ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... story," with a sniff of disbelief. "They tell me she 's old Gillis's daughter over ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... be any more moral solely because of a disbelief in orthodox teaching and in the Bible as an inspired book, ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... perhaps "the old God," in short, ideas by which they could live better, that is to say, more vigorously and more joyously, than by "modern ideas"? There is DISTRUST of these modern ideas in this mode of looking at things, a disbelief in all that has been constructed yesterday and today; there is perhaps some slight admixture of satiety and scorn, which can no longer endure the BRIC-A-BRAC of ideas of the most varied origin, such as so-called Positivism at present throws on the market; a disgust ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... she proceeds with sundry sol feggio's, to account for the circumstances, and show her disbelief of the explanation in a very satisfactory manner,—meanwhile, for I must not expose my reader to an anxiety on my account, similar to what the dear Fanny here laboured under, I was making the necessary preparations for flying to her presence, and clasping ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... specious, but false and dangerous reasoning is by no means uncommon still; but when it represented the general language of orthodox theologians, we cannot wonder that the difficulties started by Deistical writers caused widespread disbelief, and raised a panic as if the very foundations of Christianity were in danger of ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... sheds strength through all the tissues of the mind, the heart, the temperament. Disbelief sheds weakness. The one ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... men of capital, stood a little higher than the clergy, and moved in society among its autocrats. But they were full of possibilities, men of action, and men, too, of thought, with already a pronounced disbelief in the custom-house. In these days of big carnivals they would have been patented as the dukes of ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... too prudent not to recognize the near and prospective advantages of such a mediator. Accustomed to her parents' extravagant denunciations, and her uncle's more repressed but practical contempt of them, the unfortunate girl early developed a cynical disbelief in the virtues of kinship in the abstract, and a philosophical resignation to its effects upon her personally. Believing that her father and uncle fairly represented the fraternal principle, she was quite prepared for the early defection and distrust ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... child, Whose logic leads to naive conclusions; Her little knowledge reconciled To truth amid some odd confusions; Yet credulous, and loving much The problems hardest for her reason, Placing her lovely faith on such, And deeming disbelief a treason; Doubting that which she can disprove, And wisely trusting all ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... effort to carry a dream into the young minds. By the caress that was in his fingers he expressed himself. He was one of those men in whom the force that creates life is diffused, not centralized. Under the caress of his hands doubt and disbelief went out of the minds of the boys and ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... remarkable statement in a voice which he strove to divest of a triumphant inflection. No one said "Rats," though Clovis's lips moved in a monosyllabic contortion which probably invoked those rodents of disbelief. ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... this determined disbelief on the part of the head of the family, old Wilson remained for a long time a member of the household at Shoulthwaite Moss, following his occupations with constancy, and always obsequious in the acknowledgment of his obligations. It was observed that ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... gallant once, need that condemn his words to disbelief forever?" he asked. . . "May not even the most confirmed trifler have, ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... obstinate as ever, I assure you, in his disbelief in salt water. He torments me continually by asking me to tell him the story of my shipwreck, and does not believe me after all, though he has heard it a dozen times. "Sir," he said to me solemnly, after you were gone, ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... the keeping of the instrument is entrusted. These juggleries being very ancient (from the fathers of our fathers, say the Indians), we must not be surprised that some unbelievers are already to be found; but they express their disbelief of the mysteries of the botuto only in whispers. Women are not permitted to see this marvellous instrument; and are excluded from all the ceremonies of this worship. If a woman have the misfortune to see the trumpet, she is put to death without mercy. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... just where she had found her mother seated on that evening which it seemed to the girl had begun all her misery; but till now through all there had been hope—the hope given by disbelief in Leon's engagement to Elise Lesage. Now there was the sad, terrible certainty that Leon believed her false. Marie knew that though she had never pledged faith, still her eyes had shown Leon feelings which no other man had seen in them. For a moment she felt nerved ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... caves; The scroll[151] of Enoch prophesied it long In silent books, which, in their silence, say More to the mind than thunder to the ear: And yet men listened not, nor listen; but Walk darkling to their doom: which, though so nigh, Shakes them no more in their dim disbelief, 280 Than their last cries shall shake the Almighty purpose, Or deaf obedient Ocean, which fulfils it. No sign yet hangs its banner in the air; The clouds are few, and of their wonted texture; The Sun will rise upon the Earth's last day As on the fourth day of creation, when ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... not absolutely a free-thinker, he had no vices that made him an enemy to Christianity, nor that pride which tempts people to contradict a religion generally received; he did not apprehend that disbelief was a proof of wisdom, nor wished to lessen the faith of others, but was in himself sceptical; he doubted of what he could not entirely comprehend and seemed to think those things at least improbable which were not level to ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... And then I told him of how I had been disappointed and disillusioned, and how it had hurt me to find that this fight seemed so sordid and the motives of all engaged only mercenary and selfish. But once did he interrupt me, and then by an exclamation which I mistook for an exclamation of disbelief, and which I challenged quickly. "But it is true, sir," I said. "I joined the revolutionists for just that reason—because they were fighting for their liberty and because they had been wronged and were the under- dogs in the fight, and because Alvarez is a tyrant. I had no other motive. ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... I saw the beating of a very pure and loving heart. The text of her talk was that we should never allow ourselves to believe in our limitations, because they did not really exist. I found her, to my surprise, intensely emotional, with a passionate disbelief in and yet pity for all sorrow and suffering. She appealed to me to take up Christian Science—"not to read or talk about it," she said; "that is no use: it is a life, not a theory; just accept it, and live by it, and you will ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... happened to be a lord. Indeed he carried his sturdy independence so far that in his last years he fancied that his company was no longer desired in these august circles. "I never courted the great," he said; "they sent for me, but I think they now give me up"; adding, in reply to Boswell's polite disbelief, "No, sir; great lords and great {125} ladies don't love ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... wonder and disbelief struggling against the pathetic hopelessness in her eyes. Alice bent lower. She kissed ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... stuff!" exclaimed Tom, with a smile of disbelief as he saw the source of Ned's information. "Seems to me I've read something ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... spirit continued in her now. It was as if some disillusion had frozen upon her, a hard disbelief. Part of her had gone cold, apathetic. She was too young, too baffled to understand, or even to know that she suffered much. And she was ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... happy way That leads to heaven at last. My father's thoughtless act I chide That gave thee honoured place, Whose soul, from virtue turned aside, Is faithless, dark, and base. We rank the Buddhist with the thief,(388) And all the impious crew Who share his sinful disbelief, And hate the right and true. Hence never should wise kings who seek To rule their people well, Admit, before their face to speak, The cursed infidel. But twice-born men in days gone by, Of other sort than thou, Have wrought good deeds, whose ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... he can't do it for himself, he calls it by an ugly name!" Then it occurred to her that the world tells lies every day,—telling on the whole much more lies than truth,—but that the world has wisely agreed that the world shall not be accused of lying. One doesn't venture to express open disbelief even of one's wife; and with the world at large a word spoken, whether lie or not, is presumed to be true of course,—because spoken. Jones has said it, and therefore Smith,—who has known the lie to be a lie,—has asserted ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... all of the true field-hand type, aboriginal black, with dull faces, short and thick forms, and an air of animal contentment or at least indifference. They talked little, but giggled a great deal, snatching the canvas bags from each other, and otherwise showing their disbelief in the doctrine of all work and no play. When the barrows were sufficiently filled to suit their weak ideal of a load, a procession of them set off along a plank causeway leading into the fort, observing a droll semblance of military precision and pomp, and forcing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... With a total disbelief in all the vulgar legends of supernatural agency, and that upon firmer principles than I fear most people could assign for their incredulity, I must yet believe that the 'soul of the world' has in some instances sent forth ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... realised, a thing of actual and unforgetable experience. Here gradually the first tragedy of Conway is made clear, though shielded and ignored as long as possible by the loyalty of fellow-workers and the obstinate disbelief of the girl. Perhaps you think I am making too much of it all; treacherous nerves were the lot of many spiritually noble men in that hell. But little by little conviction of a deeper, less understandable, horror creeps upon the reader, only ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... that dreadful confession you had to make?" he was saying. His quiet, kindly smile implied his serene disbelief in any confessible thing. Ann Veronica pushed aside a tea-cup and the vestiges of her strawberries and cream, and put her elbows before her on the table. "Mr. Manning," she said, "I HAVE a confession ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... of the word Hamburgh, and originated in the following manner:—During a period when war prevailed on the Continent, so many false reports and lying bulletins were fabricated at Hamburgh, that at length, when any one would signify his disbelief of a statement, he would say, 'You had that from Hamburgh;' and thus, 'That is Hamburgh,' or Humbug, became ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... from the rim of the ledge and looked at him; warily, as he looked at it. With the wariness was something like question, and almost disbelief. ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... now appeared would not avouch his own disbelief in the identity of Master Peregrine, being, as he said, a man who had studied his Bible, listened to godly preachers, and seen the world; but he had no hesitation in declaring that almost every other soul in the household believed ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... himself, the certainty of his existence, and the immutability of his power; and all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries. The probability that we may be called to account hereafter, will, to reflecting minds, have the influence of belief; for it is not our belief or disbelief that can make or unmake the fact. As this is the state we are in, and which it is proper we should be in, as free agents, it is the fool only, and not the philosopher, nor even the prudent man, that will live as if there were ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... his own life the development of a nation. He progresses from unquestioning happiness to childish inquiry and wonder, from fairy tales of princes and dragons to actual knowledge; through inquiry to doubt, through faith to disbelief, through civilisation ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the Rabbit, with an air of disbelief. "Without stirring an eighth of an inch," the ...
— Adventures in Toyland - What the Marionette Told Molly • Edith King Hall
... or disbelief. That's the law, and you take it or refuse it as you please. I try to obey, but I can't, and then my work turns bad on my hands. Under any circumstances, remember, four-fifths of everybody's work must be bad. But the remnant is worth the trouble for ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... was a sneering grin of disbelief on Garcia's countenance, which made me want to dash my fist in his ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... held by clubs or cliques," he explained his disbelief in them. "They influence a certain following, but not a general following. This must be a general movement or none at all. The right ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... think, Nawab Sahib, that a man is not master of his own belief or disbelief in religions matters; though he is rewarded by an eternity of bliss in paradise for the one, and punished by an eternity of scorching in hell for ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... inspected a Coolie's great toe, which had been severely bitten by a vampire in the night. And here let me say, that the popular disbelief of vampire stories is only owing to English ignorance, and disinclination to believe any of the many quaint things which John Bull has not seen, because he does not care to see them. If he comes to those ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... condition, in such an eminent degree, that any farmer who has the power to obtain it, evinces great folly and perverse obstinacy, if he continue to cultivate his land without applying it; either for want of faith, or pretended disbelief in its efficacy; or because he thinks the price fixed upon it by the Peruvian Government, "unjustifiably high;" or because although he has no doubt it will answer in the moist climate of England, is sure it will never answer in this dry climate; or because he is afraid the luxuriant crops ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... have seemed mere madness. Had either spectator noted that the bones of the two old faces were the same, she would have condemned her own powers of observation rather than doubt the infallibility of instinctive disbelief, which is the attitude of the vernacular mind not only to what it wishes to be false, but to anything that runs counter to the octave-stretch forlorn—as Elizabeth Browning put it—of its limited experience. Had either noted that the eyes of the ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... these sleek English horses, refuses to believe in such impossibility for English men. Do you depart quickly; clear the ways soon, lest worse befall. We for our share do purpose, with full view of the enormous difficulty, with total disbelief in the impossibility, to endeavour while life is in us, and to die endeavouring, we and our sons, till we attain it or have ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... as the sowar announced the approach of the enemy, and I glanced at Ny Deen, in whose face I saw astonishment and disbelief for the moment. But it was only for the moment. Directly after, he gave several orders in a quick, decisive manner, and the officer to whom he spoke dashed off to ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... much the older of the two, came to bear upon and have connexion with that horrid belief in witchcraft which cost so many innocent persons and crazy impostors their lives for the supposed commission of impossible crimes. In the next chapter I propose to trace how the general disbelief in the fairy creed began to take place, and gradually brought into discredit the supposed feats of witchcraft, which afforded pretext ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... contrary utterance in the APOLOGY, in which the essayist, theistically bent on abasing human pretensions, gives to his scepticism the colour of a belief in those very influences.[173] There is here, clearly, no pro-religious thesis. The whole drift of the play shows that Shakspere shares the disbelief in stellar control, though he puts the expression of the disbelief in the mouth of a villain; though he makes the honest Kent, on the other hand, declare that "it is the stars ... that govern our conditions;"[174] and though he had previously made Romeo ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... of which she picked up and tried to put together. She then threw herself on the bed, and for the first time in her life was overcome with hysterical tears. She dared not confess to herself what she wanted. She would have liked to cast herself at his feet; but notwithstanding her disbelief in form and ceremony, she could not do it. She cursed the check which had held her so straitly while she was talking with him, and cursed him that he dealt with her so lightly. The continued sobbing at last took the heat out of her, and she rose from her bed, ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... its earliest history looked upon witchcraft as a deadly sin, and disbelief in it as a heresy, and set its machinery in motion for its extirpation. Its authority was the word of God and the civil law, and it claimed jurisdiction through the ecclesiastical courts, the secular courts, ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... really was. On the morning of the 9th we again left. It was our intention to have stood over midway across the Strait in search of some islands reported by the French to be thereabouts, though all the local information we could gain on the subject tended to induce a disbelief ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... to render prolonged deception practicable. The angry excitement and various rumors which have at length rendered a public statement necessary, are also sufficient to show that something extraordinary must have taken place. On the other hand there is no strong point for disbelief. The circumstances are, as the Post says, 'wonderful;' but so are all circumstances that come to our knowledge for the first time—and in Mesmerism every thing is new. An objection may be made that the article has rather a Magazinish air; ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... by recording such opinions, or by collecting the history of all the cases they could find in which no evidence of the influence of contagion existed, I believe they are in error. Suppose a few writers of authority can be found to profess a disbelief in contagion,—and they are very few compared with those who think differently,—is it quite clear that they formed their opinions on a view of all the facts, or is it not apparent that they relied mostly on their own solitary experience? Still further, of those whose names are ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... never entered his head that a royal personage and the trusted counsellors of a great kingdom could be telling the truth in a secret international transaction, and he justified the industry with which his master and himself piled fiction upon fiction, by their utter disbelief in every word which came to them ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... They stand and are killed, being too stolid to run. I found most of the officers of Port Arthur to be brilliant dashing men of the world, personally of high animal courage, but self-indulgence, neglect, disbelief in hostilities and underestimation of their ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... stand against the no-government doctrine. They are far from regarding it merely as a humbug." John A. Collins, the Anti-slavery agent referred to, founded a community at Skaneateles, N. Y., based upon the following dictums: A disbelief in any special revelation of God to Man, in any form of worship, in any special regard for the Sabbath, in any church, disbelief in all governments based on physical force, because they are "organized bands of ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... moment struck with admiration at this sublime disbelief: and then, shrugging her shoulders, she said, "You do not believe me, I see. How deeply you must love her. And you doubt if ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... that. And when the darting shuttle of his thought reminded him that Myra did not shrink from it, he went out to the front room and with his body sunk deep in a leather chair he fell to pondering on this. But it led him nowhere except perhaps to a shade of disbelief in Myra and her motives, a strange instinctive distrust both ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... not due; and we think that few readers will be inclined to quarrel with him for the quickness and depth of his sympathies with his hero, except that small class of "knowing" minds who, mistaking disbelief in human probity for acuteness of intellect, find a mischievous satisfaction in depressing heroes into coxcombs, and resolving noble actions ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... demonstrates that the present government has ceased to enjoy the confidence of the electorate. We have for Dr. Oliphant personally nothing but the warmest admiration. We do not venture for one moment to impugn his sincerity. We do not hesitate to affirm most solemnly our disbelief that he is actuated by any but the highest motives in lending his name to persecutions that recall the spirit of the Star Chamber. But in these days when the rapid and relentless march of Scientific Knowledge is devastating the plain of Theological Speculation we ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... reminded them of our previous meeting. One evening, however, the talk turned upon clairvoyance, and Mrs. La Force was expressing the utmost disbelief in it. I borrowed her ring, and holding it to my forehead, I pretended to be peering into ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... becomes 'this apparition,' and that, too, an intelligent spirit, that is, to be spoken to! Then comes the confirmation of Horatio's disbelief;— ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... ideal, no base pessimism, no slavery to science yet no boastful ignorance of its good, no morbid naturalism, no devotion to the false forms of beauty, no despair of man, no retreat from men into a world of sickly or vain beauty, no abandonment of the great ideas or disbelief in their mastery, no enfeeblement of reason such as at this time walks hand in hand with the worship of the mere discursive intellect, no lack of joy and healthy vigour and keen inquiry and passionate interest in humanity. Scarcely any special bias can be found running through his ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... repeatedly urged upon me on previous occasions, and also during the progress of these sheets through the press, that I should make a clean breast of my own belief or disbelief in spiritualism; that besides being descriptive, I should go one step beyond a mere catalogue of phenomena, and, to some extent at least, theorize on this mysterious and generally ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... one who sleeps. Ned could not tell whether he really slept. A feeling of compassion for Urrea rose again in his heart. What if he should be telling the truth after all? Wild and improbable tales sometimes came true. He was about to speak of his thoughts to the men, but he checked himself. Disbelief was returning. It was best to take ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... confidence in the character of the negroes than their conduct on so joyous and trying an occasion, as what they have exhibited during the brief period of their political regeneration. It may be considered as an earnest of their future peaceable demeanor; the disbelief of the sceptic will thus be put to the blush, and the apprehensions of the timid allayed. The first of August has passed, and with it the conduct of the people has been such as to convince the most jealous, as well as the most sanguine of the evil ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... said. She had a practical as well as a superstitious distaste for offering thanks for benefits not actually received, and also a disbelief in the present certainty of her possession, but she took hope. John had gone, Rupert was going, of her own will she would send Zebedee away, and then surely the powers would be appeased, and if she suffered enough from loneliness, from dread of seeing Mildred Caniper ill again, ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... in this chapter, devoted to locomotion, of the coming invention of flying. This is from no disbelief in its final practicability, nor from any disregard of the new influences it will bring to bear upon mankind. But I do not think it at all probable that aeronautics will ever come into play as a serious modification of transport and communication—the main question here under consideration. Man ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... generally arisen from scepticism, deficiency in taste, or disbelief in the injurious consequences of the practice. Some consider that levity is likely to bring any subject it touches into contempt, or is only fitly used in connection with light subjects; while others regard it as merely a source of harmless pleasure, and can even ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... the only reason, as he was very modest in regard to his own capacity, and had no great opinion of the works of those more fortunate composers who were writing for the French stage at that time. In him I thus, for the first time, met with the frankly expressed admission of disbelief in the value of all our modern creations in this dubious field of art. I have since come to the conclusion that this incredulity, often expressed with much less modesty, justifies the participation of all Jews in our artistic concerns. Only once did Halevy speak to me with real candour, when, on ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... side of the house. In point of fact, it is one of the many results of Spiritualism to make the permanent destiny of the race a matter of common reflection and discourse, and a vehicle for the prevailing disbelief of the Middle-Age doctrines on the subject. I cannot help thinking, when I remember how many conversations my friend and myself have sported, that it would be very extraordinary, if there were no mention of that class of subjects which involves all that we have ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... remonstrances as to the folly of venturing into the night air, and cited many examples of pugilists who had suffered defeat in consequence of neglecting the counsel of their trainers. Cashel expressed his disbelief in these anecdotes in brief and personal terms; and at last Mellish had to content himself with proposing to limit the duration of the ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... kind of shook my disbelief in the infallibility of the serious Irish gentleman soldier of fortune. It certainly seemed that the patriotic grafters had gone about the thing in a business way. I looked upon O'Connor with more respect, and began to figure on what kind of uniform ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... Jacob Delafield was standing on a chair, hanging a picture, while Dr. Meredith and Julie, on either side, directed or criticised the operation. Meredith carried picture-cord and scissors; Julie the hammer and nails. Meredith was expressing the profoundest disbelief in Jacob's practical capacities; Jacob was defending himself hotly; and Julie ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the information as she might have received a blow,—staggering backward, and whitening, and losing her breath; but almost immediately afterward she uttered a sad cry of disbelief and anguish. ...
— Esmeralda • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Arc. The English long believed silly stories against her, as a bad woman, stories which were not even mentioned by her judges. The very French, at different times, have mocked at her memory, in ignorance and disbelief. They said she was a tool of politicians, who, on the other hand, never wanted her, or that she was crazy. Men mixed up with her glorious history the adventures of the false Maid, who pretended to be Joan come again, and people doubted as to whether she really died at Rouen. ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... avowed Atheism seldom fails to awaken, by disclaiming much that had been imputed to them, by professing a sort of mystic reverence for the Spirit of Nature, and by denying that their speculations involve a disbelief in God. In following these opposite courses at different times, they have been actuated by a politic regard to the exigencies of their wretched cause, and have alternately adopted the one or the other, just as it might seem, in existing circumstances, to be more ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... did not believe in the boy. Lord George remembered that he himself had expressed disbelief, and that Mr. Knox had almost rebuked him. "I have now told you all the facts," said Lord George, "and have told them as ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... and most virtuous of the Pagans, on account of their ignorance or disbelief of the divine truth, seems to offend the reason and the humanity of the present age. [70] But the primitive church, whose faith was of a much firmer consistence, delivered over, without hesitation, to eternal torture, the far ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... her. To do this he found it necessary to sit on the sofa close to her. What he told her made her blush very rosy again, and stammer a little as she declared her disbelief in all he said, and was sure there were the prettiest girls in the world in New York, and that he had never thought of her a moment. And no, she would not listen to him—she did not believe a word he said; and—yes, ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... announcement of the adjutant, the governor betrayed a movement of impatience, that was meant to convey his utter disbelief of the whole of the prisoner's statement, and his look seemed to express to the court it should also arrive, and without hesitation, at the same conclusion. Even all authoritative as he was, however, he felt that military etiquette and ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... Egham races. The party lasted more than a week; there was a great number of people, and it was very agreeable. Erskine was extremely mad; he read me some of his verses, and we had a dispute upon religious subjects one morning, which he finished by declaring his entire disbelief in the Mosaic history. We played at whist every night that the Duke was there, and I always won. The Duchess was unwell most of the time. We showed her a galanterie which pleased her very much. She produced a picture of herself ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... especially that scarcely any within the church so believed. Those that have not believed in the world in any life of the soul after the life of the body are greatly ashamed when they find themselves to be alive. But those that have confirmed themselves in that disbelief seek affiliation with their like, and are separated from those that have had faith. Such are for the most part attached to some infernal society, because they have also denied the divine and have despised the truths of the church; for so far as any one confirms ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... and tireless persistence human beings reserve for searches for what they do not wish to find. At last he contrived to find, or to imagine he had found, something that justified his labors and vindicated his disbelief ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... ankles in five inches of water. His eyes stared ahead in disbelief. His brain was numbed. Only his eyes were alive, staring, wide in horror. Finally his brain pieced together the image that his vision sent to it. Pieced it together but ...
— The Day of the Dog • Anderson Horne
... schooner in earliest spring, for the Banks. The old man had been all winter meditating a surprise; and his crew were in unusual excitement, peering out at the weather, consulting almanacs, prophesying (to outsiders) a late season, and winking to each other a cheerful disbelief of their own auguries. The fact is, they were intending to slip off before the rest, and perhaps have half their fare of fish caught before the fleet got along. No plan could have succeeded better—up ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... Ron," Dennis replied. "That may account for the heresy of my profound disbelief in science. I wouldn't cross the road to see a 'miracle.' The twentieth century is uncongenial to anything of that sort. Take it from me, old chap, there's a man at the back of this—not a nice man, I admit, but an ordinary human being to all outward appearances—and when we catch a glimpse of ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... preeminence. No man ever drank deeper of the bitter cup of disappointed ambition and alienated affections. No man ever more fully realized the vanity of this world. None of the courtiers, by whom he was surrounded, he could trust, and all his experiences led to a disbelief in human virtue. He saw, with shame, that his palaces, his wars, and his pleasures, had consumed the resources of the nation, and had sowed the seeds of a fearful revolution. He lost his spirits; his temper became soured; mistrust and suspicion preyed upon his mind. His love of pomp ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... change. And yet it is the light which He has set to rule the night of life, and we may rejoice in its crescent beam. We are often tempted to question the reality of faith in ourselves and others, by reason of the unbelief and disbelief which co-exist with it. But why should we do so? May there not be an inner heart and centre of true trust, with a nebulous environment of doubt, through which the nucleus shall gradually send its attracting and consolidating power, and turn it, too, into firm substance? May there not ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... enlightened views which the utensil takes of the matter. I might multiply examples, ad infinitum, to illustrate my meaning; but to those who are familiar with the phenomena alluded to one instance will suffice; while those who have never experienced them will probably, at all events, take refuge in disbelief, and lament themselves with a self-satisfying sorrow over the fresh proof it adduces of the truth of the Israelitish monarch's aphorism, that "all men are ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... came out in his dealings with Mary's family. Walter Gray came home to find his daughter's grand lover stretching his long figure on the grass at her feet, while the smaller Grays, their shyness quite departed, rolled and tumbled over him as confident as puppies. To be sure Walter Gray, with his disbelief in distinctions of rank as otherwise than accidental, was not unduly elated by the fine company in which he found himself. He looked hard and long at Robin Drummond as hand met hand. Then a bright look of reassurance came ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... little king wished Geraint to come to his castle to be rested and healed of his wounds, and Geraint and Enid went and abode there a few days. But ever Sir Geraint was cold and stern to his wife, for he was still angry at her disbelief in him. ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... this astonishing offer in silence. He stared frowningly at Mignon. "Is it chok'lit ice cream?" he asked, eyeing her in open disbelief. ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... exaggeration—the wish being father to the thought—that the educated mind of the country has broken with Christianity, a statement which is equally remarkable for its accuracy and for its modesty. But it has a basis of truth in the widespread disbelief diffused through the literary and so-called cultivated classes. There is no need to spend time in referring at length to facts which are only too familiar to most of us. Every sphere of knowledge, every form of literature, is enlisted ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... man who can become a child's hero should be proud of it. There must be something good mixed with his common clay for him to achieve so much. I am glad and proud, as proud as I am of General Washington's thanks the other day; you need not look at me with such disbelief in your eyes, for I only say what is true. So ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... the voice, some secret and subtle thing in the voice that reached out and gripped Pederson and bore meaning with it. He stood quite motionless, staring at Beardsley; for a split second his eyes widened, then disbelief gave way to something ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... female sovereigns was grounded not so much on male disbelief in their personal qualifications, as upon the inevitable consequence of matrimonial and dynastic problems.[516] If the Princess Mary succeeded, was she to marry? If not, her death would leave (p. ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... present occasion Johnson defended luxury, and said that he had learnt much from Mandeville—a shrewd cynic, in whom Johnson's hatred for humbug is exaggerated into a general disbelief in real as well as sham nobleness of sentiment. As the conversation proceeded, Johnson expressed his habitual horror of death, and caused Miss Seward's ridicule by talking seriously of ghosts and the importance ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... found in it. He was thus brought into collision with the pretensions of the priesthood, and was thereby led to question the doctrines on which their authority was based. In 1381 he declared his disbelief in the doctrine of transubstantiation, and thereby denied to priests that power "of making the body of Christ," which was held to mark them off from their fellow-men. In any case, so momentous an ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... I retain the spiritual essentials I learned then and there. I never had the young man's period of disbelief. There has never been a time when if the Angel of Death had appeared upon the scene—no matter how festal—I would not have knelt with adoration and welcome; never a time on the battlefield ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... puppets and their fortunes has power, will never be a novelist. The novelist must "make believe very much"; he must be in earnest with his characters. But how to be in earnest, how to keep the note of disbelief and derision "out of the memorial"? Ah, there is the difficulty, but it is a difficulty of which many authors appear to be insensible. Perhaps they suffer ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... "Your disbelief could no more abolish Him than can your fear create Him," replied Sir Oliver. "But your mood being what it is, were it not ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... (4) Finally, it was responsible for a great increase of indifference to religion. People too lazy or too ignorant to understand the philosophic basis of Deism, used the arguments of Deists in justification of their contempt for religion, and to many people disbelief and intelligence seemed to be synonymous. We have considered Deism here for its significant bearing on the religious situation in the eighteenth century. In the following section we shall see how it was part and parcel of the scientific ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... hue came over Lucas's face. His first fright had given way to fury at perceiving himself the victim of a mistake, but now alarm was born in his eyes again. Was it, after all, a mistake? This obstinate disbelief in his assertion, this ordering away of all who could swear to his identity—was it not rather a plot for his ruin? He swallowed hard once or twice, fear gripping his throat harder than ever the dragoon's fingers had gripped mine. Certainly he was not the Comte de Mar; but then he ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... kilometres per second (Principles of Chemistry, Eng. ed., 1905, vol. ii. p. 526). On the other hand, the well-known physicist Dr A.H. Bucherer, speaking at the Naturforscherversammlung, held at Stuttgart in 1906, declared his disbelief in the existence of the ether, which he thought could not be reconciled at once with the Maxwellian theory and ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... fulfilled. "Voltaire was," says Lord Brougham, "through his whole life, a sincere believer in the existence and attributes of the Deity. He was a firm and decided, and an openly declared unbeliever in Christianity; but he was, without any hesitation or any intermission, a Theist." His open declaration of disbelief in the inspiration of the Bible, and his total rejection of the dogmas of Christianity, laid him open to the malignant attacks and misrepresentations of the priesthood and the bigots of Europe; and so strong were they, that his life was continually in danger. Lord Brougham, in his "Men of Letters ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... enduring brass, bestowing the highest eulogies on the character of Anthony Forster, who, with his virtuous dame, lies buried beneath this tombstone. His is the knightly figure that kneels above; and if Sir Walter Scott ever saw this tomb, he must have had an even greater than common disbelief in laudatory epitaphs, to venture on depicting Anthony Forster in such lines as blacken him in the romance. For my part, I read the inscription in full faith, and believe the poor deceased gentleman to be a much-wronged individual, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... any idea that Shakespeare will have to vacate his pedestal this side of the year 2209. Disbelief in him cannot come swiftly, disbelief in a healthy and deeply-loved tar baby has never been known to disintegrate swiftly; it is a very slow process. It took several thousand years to convince our fine race—including every splendid intellect in it—that there is no such ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... abroad and altogether inapplicable to British conditions. Because other countries wisely abstained from relying on that which they did not possess, or had only imperfectly and with elaborate art created, the mistress of the seas was led to proclaim her disbelief in the very force that had made and kept her dominion, and urged to defend herself with fortifications by advisers who, like Charles II and the Duke of York two centuries before, were 'not ashamed of it.' It was long before ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... understand," he continued, accepting Auntie Sue's interpretation without comment. "And when my writing brought no money, because no publisher would accept my stuff, and the conditions under which I wrote became intolerable because of misunderstanding and opposition and disbelief in my ability and charges of neglect, I—I—stole money from my employers to gain temporary relief until my writing should amount to something. You see, I could not help believing that I would succeed, ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... secret is that the victims believed in the power of the other person, and feared their power. The greater the belief in, and fear of, the power of the person, the greater the susceptibility to his influence; the greater the sense of power of neutralizing the power, and the disbelief in his power to affect them, the greater the degree of immunity: this ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... Whitney looked his disbelief. "In this instance, I cannot speak well of the dead," he said slowly. "I know too much of Spencer's past. He was not above courting the maid and the mistress at the ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... reader may pronounce the escape of these two white men incredible, we hasten to explain that which, if left unexplained, would warrant such disbelief on ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... Melville to Governor Blakeney. He remarked, from the flashes of our hero's spirit, that touching upon this topic would be sure to defeat his purpose. He therefore pleaded that the invitation argued the Major's disbelief of any part of the accusation which was inconsistent with Waverley's conduct as a soldier and a man of honour, and that to decline his courtesy might be interpreted into a consciousness that it was unmerited. In short, he so far satisfied Edward that the manly and proper ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... minority when the new Parliament assembled in November. The Duke of Wellington was Prime Minister, the last man from whom the popular cause could expect to receive any concessions. At the opening of the session the premier took occasion to declare his disbelief "that the state of representation could be improved or be rendered more satisfactory to the country at large than at the present moment." "I am fully convinced," he said, "that the country possesses a legislature which answers all the good purposes of legislation, and this to ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... a bare few seconds before the floating object had passed within the shadow of the bridge, but there could be no doubt about it; it was a boat, riding so low that only her outline showed. Jerry rubbed his eyes in disbelief, but for only an instant. Then he sprang to the other side of the bridge, shedding hat, coat, trousers, shirt and shoes, on the way. So, at least, it seemed to Dave, who caught his chum's arm, as Jerry poised himself, his body white and gleaming in the moonlight, on the high rail that ran along ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... grounds that I venture, at the risk of being called an atheist by the ghosts of all the principals of all the colleges of Babylonia, or by their living successors among the Neo-Chaldaeans, if that sect should arise, to express my utter disbelief in the gods of Hasisadra. Hence, it follows, that I find Hasisadra's account of their share in his adventure incredible; and, as the physical details of the flood are inseparable from its theophanic accompaniments, and are guaranteed by the same authority, I ...
— Hasisadra's Adventure - Essay #7 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... insolence, insanity, arrogance, pride, patience, policy, impolicy, powerlessness and power, respect, disrespect, decay and stability, humility, charity, fitness of time and unfitness of time, falsehood, wisdom, truth, belief, disbelief, impotence, trade, profit, loss, success, defeat, fierceness, mildness, death, acquisition and non-acquisition, agreement and disagreement, that which should be done and that which should not be done, strength and weakness, malice and goodwill, righteousness ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... her present disbelief in his love, in spite of the bitter knowledge that her own had waned, Sue had no misgivings as yet as to the honor, the truth, the loyalty of the man whose name she now bore. Her illusions were gone, her romance had become dull reality, but to one thought ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... "no smiles of disbelief, if you please. Allow me, though a bravo, to compare myself to a Doge; truly, I think there's no great presumption in placing myself on a level with a man whom I hold in my power, and who therefore is in ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... the offspring of selfishness, which is apt to creep insidiously into our lives. We should crown the man who has achieved distinction and advise him as to pitfalls. "No sadder proof," Carlisle has said, "can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men." There is no royal road to a lasting eminence but the toilsome pathway of diligence, self-denial and high moral rectitude; surely not by turning sharp corners to follow that "will-o'-the wisp" transient success, at the expense of upright conduct. Neither suavity of manner nor the ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... resented it. He was far too much of a philosopher for that. It amused him as offering a new game to be played, more difficult certainly and inferentially more interesting than any of those which had hitherto enlisted his somewhat languid efforts. He appreciated also, though with a cynical disbelief in the logic of the situation, that he must polish up his reputation. He was on the new quest at the time when he overheard Banneker and Edmonds discuss the journalistic situation in Katie's restaurant, and had already determined ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... he might delay his return at the sound of the woman's grief, he would rather she did not touch him first. If any one thinks this founded on too human a notion of the Saviour, I would only reply that I suspect a great part of our irreligion springs from our disbelief in the humanity of God. There lie endless undiscovered treasures of grace. After he had once ascended to the Father, he not only appeared to his disciples again and again, but their hands handled ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... be done!—it will be done!" burst out John, at last, in that positive, excited tone, which indicated a half disbelief of his own words. "I've been reading Macerone on street-warfare; and I see the ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... our destination I picked up the next numbered bottle. It was number 13. A curious sensation passed over me and I put the bottle back, taking up number 14. "Why don't you live up to your disbelief in superstitions," I said to myself and I put bottle number 14 back. When we arrived at the place I took up number 13, got the water sample while the car was being turned and "beat it." Of course ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... know they are acting, and have to mask their faces with smiles, restrain the tears which they would fain let flow, and mouth witty sayings with breaking hearts. Surely the most bitter of all feelings is that cynical disbelief in human nature which is so characteristic ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... story of Big Tom's adoption of the child was scarcely accepted as being a possibility. The first man who heard it received it with a grin of disbelief. This individual was naturally ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... The alien had wriggled about, striving to raise his head against the wall as a support. His captor pulled the Hawaikan into a sitting position, but the native accepted that aid almost as if he were not even aware of Ross's hands on his body. He stared with a kind of horrified disbelief at the ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... expectation of the usual disagreeable routine with an aged patient—who can hardly believe that medicine would not "set him up" if the doctor were only clever enough—added to his general disbelief in Middlemarch charms, made a doubly effective background to this vision of Rosamond, whom old Featherstone made haste ostentatiously to introduce as his niece, though he had never thought it worth while to speak of Mary Garth in that light. Nothing escaped Lydgate in ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... told him earnestly, then laughed softly at his disbelief. She kissed him again and again, softly as moonlight falls upon meadows. The man's heart leaped and flooded, but no more words would come to his lips. He could only sit with his strong arms ever holding ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... Great Divide. It was from his own pen, but he did not tell her so. Mrs. Bellamy—the widow—confessed that, in spite of its brilliance, she did not like it. It betrayed bitterness, a loss of ideals, a disbelief in ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... some munificent gifts to this same cause. In two cases gentlemen came forward and made large additions to our endowment as their way of showing disbelief in these attacks ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... effect of completely reforming him. This naturally brought the discussion down to the question with which I have commenced this chapter: Does man ever reform? I argued in the negative, and gave the reasons for my disbelief much as I have set them forth here. MacShaughnassy, on the other hand, contended that he did, and instanced the case of himself—a man who, in his early days, so he asserted, had been a scatterbrained, ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... spirits,—but had believed it a part of their ignorance, and unworthy a white child,—the daughter of their master! She had laughed with Dick Ruggles over the illusions of Larry, and had shared her father's contemptuous disbelief of the wandering visitant being anything but a living man; yet she would have screamed for assistance now, only for the greater fear of making her weakness known to Mr. Starbuck, and being dependent upon him for help. And with it ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... sordid, selfish, cowardly." She fancied she heard Mormon Joe saying it, and herself expressing her disbelief in the statement. "There are few persons strong enough to stand the gaff of public opinion." She had contradicted ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... is no hardship which these heroic men will not encounter in performing their thrice holy mission. Piotrowski, who, like all Poles, was an ingrained Roman Catholic, after passing through phases of doubt and disbelief had returned to a fervent orthodoxy: this spiritual succor was most precious ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... unmethodically read books from the town library—Walter Scott, Richard Le Gallienne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mrs. Humphry Ward, How to Know the Birds, My Year in the Holy Land, Home Needlework, Sartor Resartus, and Ships that Pass in the Night. Her residue of knowledge from reading them was a disbelief in Panama, Pennsylvania. ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... treated her all things were possible. She half believed them. At last he told her I was dead. An acquaintance had found me in a Paris hospital and had paid for my funeral. She had no reason for disbelief. He pressed his suit. Her father and mother urged her—the fool Rushworth soon afterwards came to another crisis, and de Verneuil again stepped in and demanded Joanna as the price. She is gentle. She has a heart ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... to see how readily the disbelief died out of the other's face. It was almost magical. It was as though his previous expression had been nothing but acting and his fresh attitude the result ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... period of its crucial test. We did not believe that his gigantic experiment could be brought to a successful conclusion. The absurd currency theories which were from time to time set up in antagonism to his policy never impressed us; our disbelief was based upon our fear that the commercial and industrial wreckage, consequent upon an increase of forty per cent. in the purchasing power of money within three years, would be infinitely greater than ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
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